There was actually a five page review of Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of The Starry Skies sitting in my drafts folder for months now. After looking over it real quick and realizing how bad I am at actually writing serious reviews, I decided to revise it into something that’s less garbage. Plus I really don’t feel like writing another five pages detailing my boss fight with a giant tree.
Ah, Dragon Quest 9. A good old fashioned RPG originally released on the Nintendo DS that lets you fight tooth and nail with fearsome monster whales, ghosts, samurai tigers and … harmless slimes. Except they’re not really that harmless because before you know it you’re surrounded by metallic slimes that take forever to kill but they are the ONLY source of decent experience in the entire dungeon so you’re forced to waste your attacks on them while they whittle away at your health until you die a slow painful death.
Hm.
The Good
- Quirky characters; There are lots of dialogue that are more than just “Save the world for us!”. Really enjoyed just talking to the NPC’s most of the time.
- Other than the few areas that are restricted until you reach a certain point in the game, you can visit almost any area. You can also pretty much take on any boss at any point in the game. Some are clearly way above your level early on though.
- So, so many attacks and spells to learn.
The Bad
- The post-game is insanely hard. There’s some sort of online mode that was nixed by the time I started playing. From what I heard it was supposed to help you level up in the post game but without it the difficulty just ramps up crazy fast.
- Level grinding sometimes takes too much time. I mean, I get that there needs to be some effort to make leveling up a challenge. But there are times when it just takes way too long to even see any monsters. You could be walking around and have maybe one or two monsters spawn in the span of five minutes.
Summary
With this, I hope to finally put an end to my ramblings about this game ever since I finished it. But I really did enjoy Dragon Quest IX. It reinvigorated my enjoyment of role-playing games. There are so many video games that strive to create these really unique experiences and it was nice to get back to the classic style for once. I guess what I’m trying to say is, this game came out seven years ago why am I even writing this
Scripted Journal 